.:why wii?:.

*editor’s note: i have gotten some awesome feedback that i’m a tiny bit on the wordy side, so i’ve hacked out quite a bit. oh the joys of learning how to blog correctly…

i would be willing to bet that if it seems a little mad to me…someone who really loves and enjoys video games…i can only imagine what the ‘wii insanity’ must seem like to the general populace. but again, even though i find it crazy, i still understand.

what is it about this little gadget that makes it seem like something that the world must have?

.:a child among men:.

it’s obviously not the fact that it’s any better than what it competes with from a hardware point of view. for all intents and purposes, the wii is just a re-packaged gamecube with a few add-ons…an SD memory card slot, USB ports, wireless connectivity, bluetooth.

it’s certainly not it’s general ‘home entertainment’ capabilities. the wii doesn’t have a built in hard drive so you can store things like movies and music. it doesn’t even have a DVD player.

and the games…well…it could be argued that the games aren’t anything to write home about either, given the massive technological advancements that have happened over the past five years in console gaming. nintendo is still riding on the franchises of its 8-bit days…metroid, zelda, mario, donkey kong, star fox. granted, they keep coming out with some pretty innovative games here and there, such as warioware*, viewtiful joe or ikaruga…

*editors note: i had it pointed out to me that i made a mistake. i originally had ‘katamari’ posted there, which is not true. katamari was orginally released for the PS2 in japan. my apologies! so much for writing posts late at night…

but, from a marketing perspective, i think it’s all of these things that the nintendo isn’t that is actually ending up being it’s saving grace.

.:everything that the wii is not makes it cool:.

1. let’s start with the obvious…the controllers. the curiosity factor alone is enough to make you want to check it out. but nintendo follows through where others in the past have not been able to, and that is nintendo is delivering a solid, well-executed experience when you get there. the controllers are nothing short of a simplistic marvel. we’ve talked about ‘VR’ experiences for years now…and while we’ve come close in the arcades, i think the home experience has been lacking very sorely in the immersion area. part of it has been the cost of doing something like this on the home level. the regular consumer is not going to go out and purchase everything you need in order to have a really immersive experience. but nintendo has remedied that nicely. it’s not expensive (relative to what you’re getting and relative to what else is out there), it’s intuitive, and most importantly, it enhances the game experience more significantly than ever before by making you, the player, feel like you have more of a direct impact on the game by knocking down the whole ‘controller barrier’ thing.

2. the wii is, at it’s core, a game system with the potential to expand on some really popular simple technologies today…not a digital entertainment hub trying to pack an entire home entertainment system into one single box. there is an intriguing social networking aspect. there is a web browser and built-in e-mail capabilities. it’s wireless and is easy to configure a connection to a wireless network. it’s easily portable. it’s got a cool weather feature. it’s got the ability to download all of the ‘classic’ old school games that you grew up with. and it’s got room for expansion in the form of the ‘channels’. all of this is bundled into a seemless package and is easy to configure.

3. it appeals to several markets that have either not been full realized or left by the wayside over the years.

there are the people that just want to play some games. period. cool graphics and sound and multiplayer is completely inconsequential. a fun, cool, easy-to-learn, casual experience is what is important.

then there’s a segment that has some interest in games, but doesn’t want to re-familiarize themselves with how to play them. take the guy who stopped playing games after college because he thought he was too cool for them. he has been off the boat for the past five or six years, but all of a sudden he wants to jump back in and feel good about his skillz. he grabs a wii, which still has those old familiar franchises available to him, and he’s back in training camp…working his way up from the original ‘metroid’ (which he’s having a blast with) to big boy school…’metroid prime’.

and then there are the kids. kids games, i think, have been grossly neglected over the past ten years. the industry has been so concerned with appealing to those gamers that have ‘grown up’ with the industry that they have a tendency to forget where it all began. and kids really don’t need to be playing GTA3 or rainbow 6: vegas or any number of other games that are for ‘mature’ audiences. nintendo still offers parents a viable option for letting their kids play some cool games without sacrificing ‘cool’ factor for the kids, and without sacrificing their own morality when it comes to some of the game that are out today. everyone wins with a nintendo.

finally…and most importantly…i feel like the wii appeals to the elusive female gamer audience more than any other game system has in the past. go to the nintendo wii site right now, and you will see several ’stories’ or ’situations’ where girls are using it. my friends girlfriends and wives are not averse to playing it. even my wife, who does not like video games at all, is a little curious, and that is saying a lot.

4. the wii is simple, and that is it’s knock-out punch. i was talking with a friend who was telling me he got one over christmas, and his grandmother was playing with it. can you honestly see dear old grandma picking up a 360 controller and start blowing away locust in ‘gears in five minutes?

looking at this from a purely marketing point of view, simple is a proven sell. the more simple something is, the better you feel about purchasing it if it appears to be something you can use. and the less time you have to spend learning about it, that equates into more time you have getting real use out of it.

look at the ipod and how it integrates with itunes. if you are a super tech dork wanting very specific things that only a tech dork would want…like ease of song transfer between systems or multiple devices, like integration with multiple pieces of mp3 playback software…the ipod is probably a little ‘annoying’ to you. but the genius of the ipod is that not only does it still appeal to those people depsite it’s ’shortcomings’…it appeals to the rest of the world who just wants to plug the thing into their computer and transfer stuff to it quickly and easily so they can spend more time doing what they want with it. in a sick way, the tech dorks derive some kind of pleasure at making things more difficult for themselves just so they can say they’ve accomplished something. but the majority doesn’t want to learn how something works…they just want it to work. and that’s what the wii is doing an awesome job at. you take it out of the box…you plug it in…you quickly set it up…and you are immediately playing games with little or no learning curve.

.:let your inner consumer take control:.

i am grudgingly proud and admiring of nintendo. i say ‘grudgingly’ because i feel like i should have kept the faith. when i heard about this whole ‘nintendo revolution’ thing from the get-go, i was not impressed. i didn’t have any faith in that it would be anything special, and i figured nintendo would be delegated to the same position sega was, which is making games for other systems. but nintendo did an extremely smart thing in not trying to compete for a market that is completely saturated by two proven high-end consumer electronics and software giants. i’ve personally thrown my hat in the ring with microsoft in that particular battle, but i will be purchasing a wii as well as soon as i can get one…and i’m excited about it. there’s a lot to like with the new little big guy on the block, and my faith has been renewed that nintendo is back in the saddle.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 4:14 am and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.